BMW Parks the X6 on Wall Street

[LeMansX5]

BMW will bypass the masses and promote its $53,000 X6 crossover to Wall Street types and the Hollywood glitterati in a new six-week campaign.

The X6 appears this week as an interactive hologram inside a 10-foot square. The enclosure has been placed in the lobby of the World Financial Center in New York and in the coming weeks it will emerge at several other locations in downtown Manhattan, such as 1 Liberty Plaza and 1 New York Plaza. Inside the enclosure is a touch screen that allows consumers to look at the X6 from different angles, as well as view the interior and the car's features. GSD&M Idea City, Austin, Texas, handles creative.

The targeted buy in affluent locations is part of BMW's strategy to deliver content to consumers who are likely to consider a new X6. "The real magic is finding where these people are," said Patrick McKenna, manager-marketing communications at BMW. "We're on CNBC, we're in airports, we're even on cable in a very limited way. But this is a small number of people and you need to be clever." McKenna noted there are going to be less than 10,000 of these vehicles available in the U.S.

On the West Coast, BMW will partner with Variety magazine to sponsor a series of parties, where the X6 will be on site. BMW also is among the sponsors of the Consumer Electronics Assn.'s Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles, being held May 5-8. The automaker will place an X6 in front of the grand ballroom adjacent to the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, which is hosting the conference.

Print ads will run in May and June issues of national business, lifestyle and auto enthusiast magazines, including Forbes, The Economist, Robb Report, The New Yorker and Road and Track. A BMW X6 insert will appear in Friday's Wall Street Journal. The ads feature different taglines including "Coupe's Evil Twin" and "What is it? What isn't it?"

Additionally, BMW will run spots on the Captivate Network, which delivers news and entertainment to digital screens in elevators of office buildings in 23 U.S. markets. There will be homepage takeovers at various financial Web sites like Bloomberg.com, Forbes.com and FoxBusiness.com.

BMW spent $154 million on U.S. ads last year (excluding online), up 7% from 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-plus.